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date: 18 March 2025

Absolute Constructions. 

Source:
Garner's Modern English Usage
Author(s):

Bryan Garner

Increasingly rare in modern prose, absolute constructions have traditionally allowed writers to vary their syntax while concisely subordinating incidental matter. The absolute phrase doesn't bear an ordinary grammatical relation to the rest of the sentence, since the noun or noun phrase does not perform any function (subject, object, apposition, etc.) that ordinarily attaches a noun grammatically to other words in the sentence. Yet the whole absolute phrase adverbially modifies some verb. For example: ... ...

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